Blog - michaelwang.cc

Eyeo Festival 2011

Fri, 01 Jul 2011 14:54:31 -0400

Eyeo Festival 2011:

In case you missed it, I made a new article chronicling my experiences from the first Eyeo Festival in Minneapolis.

I’m going to be updating the page with actual notes and post-conference thoughts, so stay tuned.

Wanna see a good infographic? Look somewhere else.

Wed, 11 May 2011 16:10:00 -0400

A few days ago, I came across this ‘infographic’ done by the people at Hunch and Column Five Media that compared “PC People” with “Mac People.”

The same ‘infographic’ soon started making its rounds across the internet, popping up in my Google Reader and Twitter feeds and showing up on Reddit. I found myself thinking more and more about it, and kept finding myself bothered by it.

After dwelling on it for a while, I realized what it was that bothered me: it was the entire ‘infographic.’ It was pretty much wrong. No, I’m not talking about the data or the findings. Those are correct as far as I can tell, or at least as correct as it can be given the creators made no errors in collecting and reporting information. What was wrong was the representation of the data.

Why the infographic is wrong

Again, let me re-iterate, I’m not complaining about the data. I understand that Hunch, the company, created a sort of web survey and collected responses from hundreds of thousands of its users, took this information, did some calculations, and came to several conclusions. I’m not going to talk about the lack of transparency in the process. There is an obvious selection bias in the respondents, but I’m not even being that picky. Also, I swear I’m not trying to be a nerd and nitpicking at how they might or might not have violated some sort of academic standard by not conducting confidence tests or something like that. (These are the sort of things I could talk days about if you got me going. But I’m not going to.)

Instead of all of that, I want to talk about two things: Usefulness and framing.

Usefulness

First off, let me define what I mean by usefulness in this context. There are several factors that I believe lend to making a useful statistic. One example is testability A statistic is testable if you wanted to and given the right context, you can go out and do your own experiments and easily verify whether or not you can support that statistic. Another factor is its explanatory power. In other words whether or not you can use a statistic to make inferences about the world, and perhaps make predictions on how the world behaves.

Several statistics shown in this ‘infographic’ fail in this respect. Let me point you to some examples of what I’m talking about. Take this gem: “PC people are 23% more likely to say they seldom throw parties. Mac people are 50% more likely than PC people to say they throw frequent parties.”

First, let’s evaluate its testability. If you’re anything like me, you probably had difficulty constructing how they acquired their results. The wording alone is difficult enough to understand. How are you supposed to interpret a statement like: “PC people are more likely to seldom throw parties?” Thinking on it a little bit, you might eventually come to the conclusion that the question “How often do you throw parties?” was presented to self-identified PC and Mac users, with two possible choices: “seldomly,” and “frequently.” Eventually, after some mental gymnastics, you might be able to reproduce the test and duplicate the results to some extent. Regardless, it wasn’t the easiest process.

As for the explanatory power, it’s pretty clear that this statistic falls flat. The only meaningful bit of information you can gleam from this quote is that PC people are more likely to respond that they seldom throw parties, etc. The 23% figure is pretty meaningless if you think about it, i.e. there’s very little application of the fact that “PC people are 23% more likely to say they seldom throw parties” to real life. Again, if you were willing to perform some mental gymnastics, you may be able to produce something meaningful, but to most people, 23% is just a number that does very little to explain relevant information.

Instead, an example of a testable and explanatory statistic would be the following: “Mac users throw twice as many parties as PC users.” As a reader, I can look at that statistic and think to myself, “No, I don’t think that’s quite right,” and conduct my own experiment to verify or discredit the results. I would just have to find on average how often Mac and PC users throw parties. In addition, the statistic can be directly applied to real life: I can go, “Oh, I’m a PC user, and I throw 2 parties a year. If I extrapolate, that means that based on this statistic Mac users throw 4 parties a year.”

Framing

Really, though, all that stuff about usefulness is kind of pointless in comparison to what is perhaps the bigger issue with this particular ‘infographic:’ the framing.

John Gruber of Daringfireball.net, reposted this a few weeks ago. He said, about the ‘infographic:’ “Nothing terribly surprising, but interesting results nonetheless.” In other words, the findings of the ‘infographic’ basically challenged none of his beliefs, and yet he finds it so interesting that he feels the need to share it with his audience of at least 6,000/day. His response, as well as the response of many others who shared this ‘infographic,’ indicated to me that something was going on. People obviously saw through the faults of the ‘infographic’ and found it essentially arousing enough interest for them to forward it on. Francis Bacon wrote once that: “The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it.”

In other words, people were eating the ‘infographic’ up because it is confirming a lot of stereotypes that are held by many internet users, particularly Mac enthusiasts. I’ve noticed that certain Mac enthusiasts, whether they admit or not, like to imagine the world as some sort of distribution graph on a single axis of coolness, sophistication, and intelligence, and they imagine the graph to look something like this:

The funny thing is, they seem to forget that Mac users are vastly outnumbered by PC users. If anything, the graph, if it exists, looks something a bit more like this:

As a matter of fact, the graph would probably be infinitely more accurate if we revealed an underlying variable here:

The axis could have easily been age, as most older computer users are more used to PCs, which would also explain away the political and social aspects of the entire ‘infographic.’ Or it could be income, because people with more money tend to purchase more expensive computers which have high production values (Macs) rather than cheaper ubiquitous computers (PCs).. All the sudden, the infographic becomes a lot less interesting. Old people tend to be more conservative than young people. They also aren’t as tech savvy as young people. People with higher incomes are more likely to have completed a 4-year college degree.

Doing even a little bit of data journalism would probably begin to explain away at nearly all of the differences outlined. It just doesn’t have the same impact, does it? Instead of confirming our suspicions and beliefs of the superiority of Mac users, the statistics presented by this chart are instead mundane facts that basically profile people by socioeconomic groupings. The original ‘infographic’ had been framed in such a way that it presented one version of reality that wasn’t painting the whole picture.

Without realizing this, people who are usually otherwise discerning and intelligent see this infographic, arrogantly chuckle to themselves at how superior they are, and forward it along to their social network.

Conclusion

It peeves me to see the following in Hunch’s footnotes: “Yes, Poindexter, we know that correlation does not imply causation.” As important as it is for readers to always view things in a critical eye, responsible representation of data is a task that should lay with the creator. If this were not the case, we would be bombarded with so much misinformation we wouldn’t know who or what to believe.

As designers, we are constantly looking down on things from our high horses, being exasperated at clueless clients and ridiculing non-designers for their lack of design understanding or aesthetic taste. But perhaps in the same way that someone with a copy of Photoshop and Dreamweaver shouldn’t immediately start making websites without the proper experience, designers with access to an Excel spreadsheet should not be so quick to create an ‘infographic.’ Good data journalism requires a good understanding of statistics and data analysis and presentation, and unless you can be confident that what you are creating is correct, right, or useful, perhaps you should take a minute and evaluate your creation.

Thoughts on J.C. Penney's new logo

Mon, 28 Feb 2011 03:52:33 -0500

J.C. Penney recently crowdsourced its logo to the design community, including the student population of University of Cincinnati and RISD. The result is a reasonably well-executed, if not a little boring logo. I’m not here to say whether I think the logo’s any good or bad, but the circumstances surrounding it are a little controversial. Not only did J.C. Penney step over a historied identity, they crowdsourced their design solution, a huge taboo in the design community. It could be argued that we’re finding ourselves in a bit of a familiar situation. Remember the last time a household name company decided to rebrand using a square and Helvetica? Yes, that’s right, it was Gap, and the rebrand was a fiasco! The public revolted and Gap retreated and brought back their old identity. Are we in for a repeat of history?

Where are the pitchforks? The mobs? Why aren’t people up in arms?

I think the answer is that J.C. Penney really doesn’t have any brand loyalists. Gap might not have a cult following either, but I’d argue that Gap at least has a brand that means something that people relate to. When I think of Gap, I get very definite feelings about the brand. They aren’t even necessarily overly positive feelings, but I can say with certainty to myself that Gap usually produces quality goods that are reasonably priced, and I enjoy certain Gap goods.

J.C. Penny lacks the same brand power. It occupies a space that is overcrowded by competitors, none of which try very hard to distinguish themselves from one another. When I think J.C. Penney, my memories are mixed with that of Kohl’s or Mervyn’s. Even then, my feelings toward the brand are more along the lines of, “Oh, they sell cheap stuff. I think I got some back to school stuff there back in elementary school,” rather than meaningful reflections of what J.C. Penney represents (or tries to represent).

You might argue this isn’t a very fair fight, because Gap is a creator of its products, and imbues each one of their products with meaning by stamping each of their goods with their logo. J.C. Penney, on the other hand, is a retailer of bargain goods. But that’s not a very good excuse. Target, for example, has done an excellent job distinguishing themselves in a crowded market. Despite facing fierce competition from the likes of K-Mart, Walmart and others, they’ve done an excellent job carving themselves a niche with quality products and great marketing. I don’t think I own anything that carries the Target brand, but I still have generally positive feelings when I think of Target.

After all, brands can be aspirational, such as luxury brands like Ferrari. They can become something that we hope one day to be more like, as if we can acquire their qualities over time. Brands can represent things that we respect, like quality, equity, durability or even frugality, and we tend to have stronger feelings towards them. But if nothing was really invested towards the meaning of a brand to begin with, how can we get worked up about it at all?

Besides, one of my coworkers brought up probably the best point: It’s not like J.C. Penney shoppers are connoisseurs of good taste to begin with.

"The key danger is that nobody's really thinking."

Wed, 02 Feb 2011 13:09:29 -0500

"The key danger is that nobody's really thinking.":

dinnerinlosangeles:

In Planet Money’s (NPR) first-ever economics experiment, half the participants were asked to pick the animal they genuinely thought was the cutest. The other half were asked to pick the animal they thought everyone else would find the cutest. Click here to see the results.

Avoiding cat-astrophes and thoughts on decision theory

Mon, 31 Jan 2011 03:19:00 -0500

My girlfriend and I took a weekend trip this past week, leaving our fat cat Mao behind with what should be an ample supply of food. While we were packing up and heading out the door, she asked me whether we should leave our bedroom door open or closed while we were gone.

We’ve recently begun closing our door at night to conserve the heat in our room when we go to bed. Our cat, who sleeps in the living room, has since developed the habit of meowing and scratching relentlessly at our door starting around 5AM, probably begging to be fed.

My girlfriend’s main concern was that while we were gone, Mao would finish all of her food in the first day or so, and then spend the rest of the weekend meowing herself hoarse at our bedroom door. I considered the alternative, that we leave the door open, allowing Mao to see in no uncertain terms that she was utterly abandoned and left to starve. Perhaps in her seething cat-rage, she’d take revenge in the only way she knew how: peeing and/or pooing on our bed.

I immediately thought of the minimax method. It’s a common rule used in decision making in the academic world, notably apparent in economics (specifically game theory and decision theory). Basically, the minimax method tells us to imagine the worst possible outcome for each possible decision and pick the lesser of the two evils. In other words, we are minimizing the maximum loss we can attain. It’s really simple, almost common sense, but I’m going to try my best to make it sound a little more complicated.

The Minimax Method

In almost any given problem, the decision model an individual uses can be simplified to a few basic approaches, and one of them in particular is the minimax method. The minimax method isn’t always the the best choice for every decision. I think a few key characteristics of the situation made minimax the winner here.

First, we were limited to strictly a scenario analysis. In other words, we were facing a non-probabilistic decision. It was uncertainty in its purest form. We had no assumptions about the probabilities of situations, or the expected values of decisions. If we were provided with the probabilities of each situation occurring, we would have a vastly different approach. We weren’t, and unfortunately, the human mind is terrible at calculating odds.

On top of that, our outcomes can only be ranked, as opposed to being rated “how much better is x than y.” I can tell you that having our bed being used as a litter-box is worse than some alternative, but I have no quantitative measure of how much worse it is.

With these limitations in mind, a lot of more flexible and detailed models of decision making were out the window.

The minimax model is also especially useful when the scenarios you are facing include one or more plausible “catastrophic” outcomes. However low the probability of something catastrophic happening, the damage of that event occurring is so high that it’s significance is much larger than other types of analysis may reveal. On top of that, in my mind, the “disaster” scenario had a non-trivial probability of occurring. As a matter of fact, there are several precedents. I’ve been told multiple stories of cats leaving special presents on the beds of less-than-thoughtful co-habitants. I’ve even experienced this first-hand: My old roommate’s cat has a habit of revenge peeing on the couch whenever she is slighted.

Why did I do this?

This decision has one major advantage over other decision making methods: it’s completely robust. Without additional information, any other choice leaves us in danger of being in a worse situation. Not only are we are controlling uncertainty to the extent that we can, but we are optimizing against catastrophic failure; hedging our bets, if you will. In other words, ignoring low-probability events may work to your favor in the short term, but consistently doing so only makes you more and more susceptible to the occasional catastrophe. By adopting a minimax strategy over the long term, you’re mitigating that risk.

Why did I bother making something so simple into something this complex? I don’t know. But I thought I’d share anyway, because when I first learned of it I thought it was a really ingenious way of making a decision in the face of complete uncertainty.

With all this in mind, we closed the door, packed up, and left Mao to fend for herself for the weekend.

I spotted a lady on her iPhone this morning

Fri, 22 Oct 2010 14:16:20 -0400

This morning on the train to work, I spotted a lady on her iPhone.

When I caught her, she was in the iPhone’s weather app, tapping around furiously, clearly trying to do something. Soon, her tapping focused on the small dot “tabs” along the bottom of the screen. I realized that she was tapping the dots to switch between Cupertino and New York weather predictions, though with limited success.

She returned to her furious tapping all over, eventually discovering the swipe feature. She swiped left and right for a bit, and I noticed that she would continually (and futilely) try to go to the right past New York. Obviously, she was unsatisfied with the limited locales the application gave weather predictions for. She resumed tapping around at random. After a few taps, her finger hit the “i” button. The weather app flipped to its back, where the settings are revealed.

The lady paused for a bit, obviously taking in this new and interesting menu. Not a few moments later, evidently having figured out the “+” button would allow her to add a new locale, she was typing in “San Francisco” into the iPhone keyboard. She fixed a typo once or twice before finishing and again started tapping away wildly. She tapped the blank white area, tapped the input area, tapped generally everywhere except for the big blue “Search” button on the bottom right. She accidentally cleared her search and had to once again type in “San Francisco.” She promptly resumed tapping around at random.

Suddenly she paused, perhaps fearful that her tapping might clear her search again. A few moments passed, and despite the “Search” button never being hit, the iPhone pulled up a few locations matching her search. She tapped the top result and the phone brought back in the settings menu of the weather app. Now things were going her way: the list, originally only showing Cupertino and New York, now included San Francisco. A bit more cautious now, her finger hovered over the screen hunting for what to do next.

She eventually found the “Done” button and lo’ and behold the app flipped back to its front. She now had weather predictions for San Francisco. 60 degrees today. A cloud signaling possible rain. She tossed her hair in triumph. Probably by now exhausted by her exploration of the new and strange, she turned her phone sideways and hit the home button. Still holding her phone sideways, she flipped through her apps and found what she was working for: Solitaire. Back to the familiar. A new game appeared, and within seconds she was lost in her own world stacking cards.

Cut&Paste SF

Thu, 07 Oct 2010 15:38:00 -0400

Hey, what are you doing this Friday? You should come out and support Kyle, Devin, and me in the annual Cut&Paste design tournament in SF. Winner gets to go to NY for the world championship.

It should be pretty fun.

The 5th percentile

Thu, 30 Sep 2010 16:09:00 -0400

You know that game Angry Birds? I love it a lot. Remember when I made this claim?

I wasn’t kidding.

Designing in 15 minutes

Wed, 29 Sep 2010 13:43:00 -0400

I recently applied to be a part of the annual Cut&Paste competition in SF. The premise is that you have 15 minutes or so to design something—live in front of an audience—based on a theme provided to you 1 week in advance, giving you enough time to prepare an idea. On the day, they have 8 competitors going at it tournament style with 2 rounds to decide a winner. In order to qualify to be one of the eight, you participate in the test round 2 weeks before the event.

I went to the test round this past Sunday held at Bolt|Peter’s office in SF. Our theme for the evening was “Bliss;” here is my take:

Also see Kyle’s take, and Devin’s take.

Designing in this format presented some interesting challenges. Much of it is not that different than any other kind of design experience: you concept it however you want, you establish a mood and visual direction, and you go for it. Then that’s where it got interesting: you practiced designing it until you got to the point where you could finish in 15 minutes. Staying within that 15 minute window may require that you cut back on your original concept and lose some detail, or in some circumstances require you to do the opposite to fill up the entire time.

By the time I settled on a final design, the time it took to create the graphic went something like this:

1st time: ~30 minutes
2nd time: ~20 minutes
3rd time: ~16 minutes
4th time: ~15 minutes

When it was time to do it live in front of the judges, I felt comfortable enough to add a few flourishes to the design and still finish early by about a minute or so. Which was bad, so I learned. When designing in front of a crowd, you never want to appear to be doing nothing. I had neglected the showmanship aspect of the format.

I guess they were right, this wasn’t just design, it was a performance. Even the most clever punchlines get old after you stare at it for a while. Audiences like the big reveal, and no matter how objective you try to be it’ll probably be the crowd-pleasers that walk away the winners.

Follow-up to an old Twitter post

Thu, 23 Sep 2010 17:59:00 -0400

A few weeks ago, a few of my friends found a version of me on the other side of the globe. His name is Michael Wong and he’s a designer in Malaysia. His website is michaelwongcc.com and his logo carries a spooky resemblance to mine. Compare:

Those who follow me on Twitter may remember seeing this post:

Anyway, I suppose that a few people followed through the link on this site, alerting doppelganger-me to my existence. Here’s the message I got from him:

Spooky.

Designer Cat

Wed, 22 Sep 2010 10:00:00 -0400

Designer Cat:

In between being productive at work the other day, Linzi and I engaged in an epic Photoshop battle using our pets as ammunition.

From her blog, “Michael and I partake in photoshop tag every once in awhile, today’s was particularly spectacular and I feel like I should share it with you…”

New website launched

Wed, 22 Sep 2010 04:08:00 -0400

I finally got around to rehauling my website after letting it sit for about 6 months untouched. The old website never had a functioning blog and it became somewhat of a monstrosity to edit. I was somewhat paralyzed by the over-engineering I had done, so rather than a progressive update I decided to start new from scratch.

There are still a bunch of bugs and holes I’d like to go in and fix, particularly the “About” section. Also, there’s no new work from the past year in my “Work” section, so don’t go there looking for anything exciting.

In the back-end, things are a lot more streamlined now. I’ve gone away from Drupal or any kind of CMS and instead focused on creating an easy to manage file structure and front-end wizardry to manage the “Work” section and using Tumblr as my blogging engine of choice.

Let me know what you think… but I’m still working on getting comments on the blogand the contact form doesn’t work so I’m leaving it to you to figure out how.

I'm Ichigo

Tue, 21 Sep 2010 04:34:31 -0400

I'm Ichigo:

My dog, Ichigo, has his own Tumblr page. You should go check it out for some cute.

Stay tuned

Tue, 21 Sep 2010 04:32:34 -0400

Something is changing soon. Keep your eyes on this site.